03/13/2012 — Pappy and Harriet’s — Pioneertown, CA
A tour never seems real to me until you change terrain. Sure, city-by-city everything is a little different; there are different coffee places and gas stations, monuments named after different local people. But until the land itself changes around you, the scope of what you are doing never full kicks in. I am traveling long, long distances, moving heavy things from one place to another, to wait for a very long time to get up, make some noise and leap around for about thirty minutes or less, only to move those same heavy things back into the van, go to where you are staying, sleep and repeat. It’s absurd, it’s grueling, it’s at times inhuman, and I absolutely love it. Seeing the suburban sprawl of the Central Valley melt away into the pastoral desert beauty of the Inland Empire is about as flipped of a switch as you can get. Shades of Cormac McCarthy and Lynch’s Lost Highway come to mind.
